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This brief provides an update to the report that Parrott and Reich issued in July 2018, "An Earnings Standard for New York City’s App-based Drivers: Economic Analysis and Policy Assessment,” and informs the final pay standard as incorporated in the Driver Income and Transparency Rules, adopted by the NewYork City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) on December 4, 2018. The newpay standard takes effect February 1, 2019.

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The federal government provides significant funding to localities, including New York City, which is targeted primarily to support children, families, and low-income communities. This support happens through a combination of direct benefits for individuals and families – social safety net programs such as Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – and social services categorical funding, which flows through the City budget to help provide services to individuals and families. Some federal funding streams, such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), provide both kinds of funding – direct benefits to families as well as programmatic funding to states and localities.

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When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ran for re-election in 2017 on the ambitious promise of offering free preschool to the city’s 3-year-olds, classes in living rooms were most likely not what he or voters had in mind. But last month, just over a year into 3K’s multi-year rollout, the City Department of Education (DOE) revealed its intention to bring 3K into the more loosely regulated world of home-based child care settings.

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In 2016, New York City rolled out a small pilot project intended to address a problem that many in the city had long ignored or taken for granted: While New York’s public school population is one of the most diverse in the country, it is also one of the most starkly segregated by race and class. In a report, released by the Center for New York City Affairs, we assess the promises and limitations of the Diversity in Admissions initiative, as well as its outcomes so far. Using school- and grade-level data for each of the pilot schools, we created the interactive visualizations below to understand all 86 schools’ goals in the context of recent trends in the demographic makeup of their student populations. We spoke with school leaders, DOE administrators, and academic researchers to learn how these schools designed their admissions priorities and the challenges they’ve faced in implementing them. And we analyzed results at the 19 schools that participated in the initiative’s first two years.

In the poorest neighborhoods of New York City, frontline child welfare workers frequently carry caseloads far above recommended levels, according to data from the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), which runs the City's child welfare system.

In order to keep children safe, national child welfare experts recommend that child protective caseworkers, who investigate possible cases of abuse and neglect, carry loads of no more than 12 to 14 families at a time. In many parts of the city, ACS succeeds in keeping caseloads well below that range: In Queens, for example, the average caseload was under eight families per worker in September. The citywide average was 10.1.

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More than a year and a half after a pair of widely publicizedchild deaths, New York City's child welfare agency continues to investigate a dramatically higher number of families than in recent years, according to data published by the Administration for Children's Services (ACS).

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App-based ride-hailing companies have grown rapidly in New York City and across the U.S. over the past five years, yet the full-time New York City drivers who provide 80 percent of the rides are struggling just to get by, according to a new report from The New School in New York City and the University of California, Berkeley.

The report highlights the need for and the effects of the Taxi and Limousine’s Commission’s (TLC) proposed driver pay standard, which would apply to drivers affiliated with Uber, Lyft, Via, and Juno in New York City.

The study found that 85 percent of app-based drivers earn below the proposed minimum pay level, after allowing for vehicle and related expenses. The TLC’s proposal would result in 14 percent average increase in gross pay and a 22.5 percent increase in net pay.

Recent years have brought a series of rapid changes to New York City’s subsidized early education system. There was the massive EarlyLearn reform of 2012, pre-K expansion in 2014, and now the Department of Education's rollout of preschool for 3-year-olds as it prepares to take over responsibility for all City-contracted child care services. In this shifting landscape, trends in enrollment can provide a window into how parents and providers are experiencing the changes. Using point-in-time data obtained by CNYCA, we have identified five key enrollment trends in New York City’s subsidized child care system.

By James Parrott

CNYCA partners with the Workforce Field Building Hub, an initiative of the NYC-based Workforce Professionals Training Institute (WPTI) on the Monitoring the Minimum Wage issue brief series. The briefs are intended to track the implementation of the $15 minimum wage in New York City by engaging businesses, workers and workforce practitioners, and by assessing the impacts in other jurisdictions around the country.

Monitoring the Minimum Wage: Brief 4 on lessons from other cities is available here.

The conventional wisdom is that most elementary school children in New York City attend their zoned neighborhood schools and that the city’s high levels of school segregation merely reflect segregated housing patterns. But a more nuanced and in some ways disquieting story emerges from our analysis presented in a new policy report from the Center for New York City Affairs, “The Paradox of Choice.”

The Department of Education Will Soon Take Charge of Child Care for Babies and Toddlers. What Can They Do to Build Capacity and Improve Quality?

The last in a series of briefs looking at child care for babies and toddlers in New York City's subsidized early education centers, this report presents our key findings. It also provides recommendations for building the centers’ capacity to provide quality infant and toddler care. With the City preparing to move its subsidized child care system from its current home at the Administration for Children’s Services to the City’s Department of Education, our advisory board of early education stakeholders, argues that now is the time to dream big when it comes to babies and toddlers, and to build a rich continuum of early education from infancy onward that will prevent the need for more costly interventions down the line.

Many child care centers have seen their enrollment of 4-year-olds decline due to New York City's pre-K expansion, which has dramatically grown the number of early education options available to kids this age. In response, some centers have become interested in “aging down” to serve younger children. This would be a tremendous boon in New York City, where quality affordable and subsidized infant and toddler care is in high demand and short supply. However, "aging down" is difficult. This report looks at ways that affordable and subsidized centers who do provide infant care make it work.

Even as Governor Andrew Cuomo promises to defend New Yorkers’ health care from federal funding cuts, his proposed budget threatens to kill a long-planned fix to the state’s underfunded, overburdened system of mental health services for children.

Decades of national research have documented the “achievement gap” among students of different racial and ethnic groups as measured by their scores on standardized tests, with White and Asian students generally outperforming their Black and Hispanic peers. Now, a new tool developed by the Integration Project at the Center for New York City Affairs allows parents, educators, and policymakers to see just how large that gap is among students at each of the city’s approximately 900 public elementary schools, both district and charter. It also shows how strongly and how frequently this gap is moderated by the household incomes of students, even within the same schools.

In 2013, New York City launched an array of programs designed to keep teenagers out of the City’s foster care system.

The programs—known collectively as “teen-specialized preventive services”—represent a pivotal piece of the City’s ongoing child welfare reform agenda: to keep whittling down the number of kids who enter foster care by providing intensive, evidence-based therapy to families in crisis.

Congress Needlessly Putting Children's Health at Risk

By Abigail Kramer

A crisis in children’s health insurance may be coming to New York State. State officials could start sending termination letters to families on its Child Health Plus insurance program as soon as early December—a development that was first reported by Politico, and which would put New York in the company of nearly a dozen other states around the country.

Monitoring the Minimum Wage: Brief 3 on Lessons From Other Cities

By James Parrott

CNYCA partners with the Workforce Field Building Hub, an initiative of the NYC-based Workforce Professionals Training Institute (WPTI) on the Monitoring the Minimum Wage issue brief series. The briefs are intended to track the implementation of the $15 minimum wage in New York City by engaging businesses, workers and workforce practitioners, and by assessing the impacts in other jurisdictions around the country.

Monitoring the Minimum Wage: Brief 3 on lessons from other cities is available here.

For more than a year, Inwood has been the stage of a drama featuring City Hall and activists from that largely working- and middle-class northern Manhattan neighborhood as the chief actors. The eventual outcome will not only shape one community’s future; it will have broader implications, too, previewing a process that will affect tens of thousands of New Yorkers living in roughly a dozen other neighborhoods that the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio has identified for rezoning. And while the development-versus-affordability plot of the Inwood story is all too familiar in New York, research by the Center for New York City Affairs suggests ways policymakers and community leaders can learn from what has happened in Inwood and other communities, and rewrite the script in ways that might make a happier ending possible.

Growing interest in early education has led to more infant classrooms in child care centers—but they’re mostly for wealthy families.

By Kendra Hurley

Parents seeking subsidized child care for babies often hope for a spot at a licensed early education center. But almost inevitably, their babies instead wind up in subsidized home-based programs, known as family child care, where women get paid meager wages to look after neighborhood kids in their homes, and which are far less regulated than child care centers. That’s because child care centers citywide have historically had very few slots for children younger than 2 years old, in large part due to the costs and difficulties involved in meeting stringent safety regulations for infants in centers.

In Late April Mayor Bill de Blasio announced two new plans that could determine the future of the country’s largest child care system for poor and low-income families. First, the Mayor wants to expand his well-regarded “Pre-K for All” program for 4-year-olds (also known as universal pre-K or “UPK”) to provide free preschool to 3-year-olds as well. The projected multi-year expansion is called “3-K for All.”

After a series of widely publicized child deaths in 2016, New York City's child welfare system continues to struggle under a glut of new cases.

In response to a surge in child abuse and neglect reports, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) has drastically increased the number of families it brings into the system, filing more cases in Family Court and placing more children in foster care.

But the resulting system-overload, they say, increases the risk of breaking up families unnecessarily, and may make children less safe.

No Heavy Lifting Required: New York City's Unambitious School 'Diversity Plan

By Nicole Mader and Ana Carla Sant'Anna Costa

Earlier this month, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) released a long-awaited plan designed to increase diversity in the city's public schools. The Center for New York City Affairs has crunched the numbers on these goals and found that they would not reflect meaningful, systemic change.

Adrift in NYC: Family Homelessness and the Struggle to Stay Together

By Kendra Hurley

As family homelessness in New York City continues to climb and the City fights to open 90 new shelters, a new report by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School offers insight into how family shelters are missing opportunities to avert a hidden but common catastrophe of homelessness: families breaking apart.

House Republicans' first big effort to get rid of Obamacare has died a noisy death (at least for now). The implications for New York are big: Had the proposed “repeal and replace” American Health Care Act become law, State officials estimate that more than a million New York residents would have faced a significant loss of health care, and that the State, its counties, and hospitals would have taken a cumulative hit of more than $4.5 billion over four years.

Five Steps to Integrate New York City Elementary School (2016)

By Clara Hemphill, Lydie Raschka and Nicole Mader

The City can do much more to foster economic integration of elementary schools than the small scale efforts it has made to date. Based on our visits to 150 schools across the city over the past two years, here are five feasible steps we believe the City can take.

Integrated Schools in a Segregated City: Ten strategies that have made New York City elementary schools more diverse (2016)

By Clara Hemphill, Nicole Mader and InsideSchools staffThe staff of InsideSchools visited 80 elementary schools to find out how some formerly high-poverty schools have succeeded in attracting children from a range of races, ethnicities and income levels.

Bringing It All Home: Problems and Possibilities Facing NYC's Family Child Care (2016)

By Kendra Hurley with Janie Ziye ShenIn 2012, NYC launched one of the country's largest experiments in raising the quality of subsidized family child care. More than three years since the launch of EarlyLearnNYC, we investigated what has worked and what has not. READ | DOWNLOAD

Segregated Schools in Integrated Neighborhoods: The City's Schools Are Even More Divided Than Our Housing (2016)

By Clara Hemphill and Nicole Mader In multi-ethnic New York City, why are so many elementary schools segregated by race and class? New research demonstrates that school segregation is not always the result of housing patterns.

By Kim Nauer, Nicole Mader and Laura ZingmondNearly half of New York City students fail the Algebra 1 Regents exam on the first try. Thousands retake the exam multiple times, caught up in what teachers call the “Algebra whirlpool.”

What's Wrong with Math and Science in NYC High Schools? (2015)

By Clara Hemphill, Nicole Mader and Bruce CoryWhile small schools have been successful in helping struggling students graduate, many do not offer the higher-level coursework that prepares students for college and careers. This policy brief offers recommendations based on the experiences of a number of successful schools.

Conquering Teachers' Math Anxiety (2015)

By Lydie Raschka and Clara Hemphill It’s not surprising that many elementary school teachers struggle with the Common Core State Standards for math. Many early childhood teachers are actually frightened of math. They may doubt their own ability and have chosen a profession where they think it won’t matter.

Introducing the Baby & Toddler Takeoff (2015)

By Kendra Hurley, Abigail Kramer and Bruce Cory with Evan Pellegrino and Gail Robinson With nearly 15 million new dollars earmarked in the 2016 city budget for the social and emotional health of the youngest New Yorkers, the city's growing interest in what's often called "infant mental health" is undeniable. This report offers the first comprehensive look at New York's key new goals and efforts to protect the well-being of babies and toddlers. READ | DOWNLOAD

In Need of Shelter: Protecting the city’s youngest children from the traumas of homelessness(2015)

By Kendra Hurley and Abigail KramerThis Child Welfare Watch report describes the stresses that homelessness puts on families with young children, and explores the discontinuity between the large number of young children in the shelter system and the dearth of services available to them. READ | DOWNLOAD

Scaling the Community School Strategy in New York City: A Systems Building Guide (2014)

By Kassa Belay, Nicole Mader and Laura MillerA report detailing recommendations that can help sustain the city's new community schools initiative. NYC has long been home to some of the nation's most celebrated community schools but until recently there has been little support for this strategy at the city level. READ | DOWNLOAD

Big Dreams for NYC's Youngest Children: The Future of Early Care and Education (2014)

By Kendra Hurley and Abigail Kramer with Myra Rosenbaum and Alison Miller In October 2012, New York City launched EarlyLearnNYC, a plan that would upend its system for providing subsidized child care to working class and low-income families. The goal was to take the city’s sprawling assortment of child care programs—ranging from subsidized babysitting services to nationally accredited preschools—and blend them into a unified, holistic spectrum of early education services for children from 6 weeks through 4 years old. READ | DOWNLOAD

By Andrew White, Kendra Hurley, and Abigail KramerWe look at the science of early childhood development—and we illuminate how supportive, nurturing caregivers can buffer children from the negative impacts of early adversity, including the ambient stress that so often accompanies intractable poverty.

Building Blocks for Better Schools:How the Next Mayor Can Prepare New York's Students for College and Careers (2013)

By Clara Hemphill, Kim Nauer, Andrew White and Thomas JacobsWe analyze the successes and failures of Mayor Bloomberg's education initiatives—and proposes six key areas on which the next administration should focus attention and resources. A top priority: Make sure young children can read.DOWNLOAD

Brushes With The Law:Young New Yorkers and the Criminal Justice System (2013)

By Andrew White, Kendra Hurley, and Abigail KramerIn the final year under the administration of Mayor Bloomberg, who has made juvenile justice one of the signature issues of his time in office, we consider the progress of reforms and the places where they’ve been stymied. And we look at the impact on communities that have long been destabilized by cycles of crime, police scrutiny, arrest and incarceration.

Creating College Ready Communities: Preparing NYC's Precarious New Generation of College Students (2013)

By Kim Nauer and Paul Tainsh with Andrew White, Tara Bahl, Sandra Salmans, Anna Schneider, Jared Carrano and Tom JacobsThis report seeks to illuminate the latest college access efforts, and to shed new light on the complicated circumstances that allow some students to go to college and succeed—and so many others to fail. I

New York City's College Ready Communities Initiative:Evaluation and Documentation (2009 - 2012)

By Paul Tainsh, Andrew White, Kim Nauer, Thomas Jacobs and Laurie GoldkindOur evaluation of four unique collaboratives found large improvements in college access, college knowledge and college-going culture in many of the schools, and identified large hurdles that remain for NYC to address.

One Step Back: The Delayed Dream of Community Partnerships (2012)

By Andrew White, Kendra Hurley, and Abigail Kramer This edition looks at the progress of the city’s community partnerships, at their accomplishments as well as their very real limitations, and at the vision they still represent for a child welfare system that answers to the communities it’s designed to serve.

In Transition: A better future for youth leaving foster care (2011)

By Andrew White, Clara Hemphill, Kendra Hurley, and Abigail KramerThis special double edition of Child Welfare Watch reports that homelessness and severe economic hardship are widespread for young people aging out of New York City foster care.

Managing By The Numbers: Empowerment and Accountability in NYC's Schools (2010)

By Clara Hemphill and Kim Nauer with Helen Zelon, Thomas Jacobs, Alessandra Raimondi, Sharan McCloskey and Rajeev YerneniThe report offers one of the first broad analyses of the Bloomberg administration's reorganization of school management, explaining how principal empowerment and school accountability are intertwined, and how this management structure is shaping children's lives. The report identifies important gains as well as troubling problems.

A Need for Correction: Reforming New York's Juvenile Justice System (2009)

By Andrew White, Clara Hemphill, and Kendra HurleyIn the wake of a federal Department of Justice investigation that found widespread use of excessive force by staff at four OCFS facilities upstate, this new report identifies shortcomings in mental health services and explores possible solutions, including the expansion of alternatives to incarceration for juvenile delinquents.

The New Marketplace: How Small-School Reforms and School Choice Have Reshaped NYC's High Schools (2009)

By Clara Hemphill and Kim Nauer with Helen Zelon and Thomas JacobsA report on the city's public high schools, revealing that Chancellor Joel Klein's high school reforms created valuable new opportunities but also caused collateral damage.

Hard Choices: Caring for the children of mentally ill parents (2009)

By Andrew White, Clara Hemphill, Kendra Hurley, Ann Farmer, and Maia SzalavitzA joint report with the Center for an Urban Future documenting the issues facing poor and working class parents with mental illness and their children.

Homes Away From Home: Foster Parents For A New Generation (2008)

By Andrew White, Kendra Hurley, Barbara Solow, Ann Farmer, Laura Longhine, and Helaine OlenThis issue documents how foster parents are adjusting to their increasingly demanding role, and how the system is struggling to meet their needs—as well as those of the children in their care, which may include anything from mental health care to prenatal care and parenting programs for pregnant teens.

Pressures and Possibilities:Supporting Families and Children at Home (2007)

By Andrew White, Kendra Hurley, Barbara Solow, Eve Heyn, Nora McCarthyThis issue published jointly with the Center for an Urban Future, explores the transformation of the city’s network of nonprofit family support agencies as they become increasingly central to the Bloomberg administration’s strategy for protecting children from abuse and neglect.

Gaining Access: New Efforts on Housing and Autism Services (2007)

By Andrew White and Barbara Solow This issue reports on publicly funded services for the rapidly growing number of New Yorkers diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, and on attempts to create affordable housing opportunities for people with developmental disabilities.

A Schoolyard in Brooklyn: Strengthening Families and Communities Through the Innovative Use of Public Space (2007)

As part of PlaNYC 2030, Mayor Bloomberg recently proposed opening 290 city schoolyards to the public during non-school hours. A Schoolyard in Brooklyn offers a proven model for how to do it right, strengthening families and communities along the way.

Half Full, Half Empty: Children and Families with Special Needs(2007)

This issue of describes the impact of a longstanding dispute that has left children and families without the respite care, in-home assistance and other family supports that can help make it possible for young people with disabilities to live healthy and more fulfilling lives.

There's No Such Place: The Family Assessment Program, PINS and the Limits of Support Services for Families with Teens in New York City (2007)

Reforms in New York City's system for handling troubled teens have helped more vulnerable young people avoid long hours in Family Court and prolonged stints in foster care. But there are signs that the new Family Assessment Program hasn't yet had a substantial impact on the larger problems facing many urban teens and their families—problems that are often inseparable from the poverty and violence in their communities.

The Innovation Issue: New Initiatives in New York Child Welfare (2005)

This issue of Child Welfare Watch highlights some of the new initiatives that are improving parental visits for children in foster care, providing homes where families can reunify after children have been removed from the home, and creating much-needed pilot mental health clinics in foster care agencies.

Spanning the Neighborhood:The Bridge Between Housing and Supports for Families (2005)

New York City has begun to reshape and expand its services to prevent family homelessness in a more comprehensive and coordinated way than ever before. But much more could be done. This report proposes a substantial new effort to root homelessness prevention in neighborhood-based safety net programs run by well-known, trusted community organizations.

Community Collaboration in New York City:Charting the Course for a Neighborhood-Based Safety Net (2005)

As "prevention" has become the mantra of New York City social policy, from child welfare to family homelessness and beyond, city officials and nonprofit leaders have pursued new strategies to achieve the old objective of building a more efficient, integrated and collaborative safety net for families. This report explores why integrated services matter at the community level.

By Andrew White This report documents contradictions that have emerged as the city reduces the size of its foster care system, but struggles to boost investments in the alternative, preventive family support services that help keep families stable and together.

A Matter of Judgement:Deciding the Future of Family Court in NYC (2005)

Hardship in Many Languages: Immigrant Families and Children in NYC (2004)

This report highlights current research on immigrant families and poverty, examines several key aspects of the social support sector—food stamps, child care, neighborhood family services and other programs—and explains how publicly funded programs have been slow to adapt to serving New York's newcomers.

Tough Decisions: Dealing with Domestic Violence (2003)

This report documents changes in policy, practice and enforcement in the wake of the federal injunction imposed in the Nicholson v. Williams class action lawsuit. The lawsuit challenged the practice of the NYC Administration for Children’s Services, in cases of suspected abuse and neglect that involve domestic violence, of too often removing children from their mothers unnecessarily and circumventing the women’s due process rights.

Supporting Stronger Families and Neighborhoods: City Hall and New York's Family and Children's Services (2001)

The Bloomberg administration has an opportunity to gain new trust from communities that have long held deep suspicion for City Hall and the city’s child welfare authorities. This report provides specific recommendations and proposed policy changes to form a road map for a sustained and ambitious child welfare reform effort.